Covering Elective Surgery Expenses

Signing up for health insurance isn’t cheap, but if you do have to go to the doctor, having coverage can save you thousands of dollars or more. But even the best insurance plans won’t cover everything. Some procedures are considered optional, or elective by your insurance company. To have an elective surgery or procedure performed, you’ll need to find another way to pay for it.

If you have a structured settlement or annuity, one option could be selling some of your future payments for a lump sum of cash. You’ll use your own money to pay any medical fees, which could help you avoid costly debt.

What Is an Elective Surgery

An elective surgery is any medical procedure that your insurance company determines is not medically necessary. According to the official Medicare site, medically necessary means:
Health care services or supplies needed to diagnose or treat an illness, injury, condition, disease, or its symptoms and that meet accepted standards of medicine.

What qualifies as “needed” can vary depending on your doctor, your past medical history, and other factors which makes it difficult to give an exact definition of what makes a procedure elective or not. The best way to determine what your plan will cover is to consult with your doctor and insurance provider.

Common Elective Procedures

While what qualifies as an elective procedure might change depending on your insurance company’s policies, some procedures are more likely than others to be deemed as not medically necessary. These include:

Cosmetic

Weight-Loss

Dental Procedures

Fertility Treatments

Elective procedures might not be considered medically necessary, but they can still have a positive impact on your quality of life.

Paying For Medical Care

Personal care is another cost that many health care plans do not completely cover. As people get older, it can take them longer to recover from accidents or medical procedures than they once did. Many medical plans only authorize physical therapy or similar treatments for a set period of time after a procedure. If you need care or therapy after this point you might be forced to pay for it on your own.

Long term care for seniors, including at-home caregiving, is another service often not covered by health insurance. According to the AARP, the median cost of an at-home caregiver is $125 a day, which could drain your savings quickly if you don’t have money set aside for it.

Paying For An Elective Procedure

If you make the decision to go forward with a surgery or other medical procedure, the next step is figuring out how to pay for it. Assuming you don’t have money for the procedure saved already, there are a few ways you can borrow what you need to cover your medical bills:

Credit cards

Personal loans

Refinancing your home

Borrowing from friends and family

Each option has its own advantage and disadvantage, but one potential downside they all share is that it means you’re taking on debt. Your friends and family might not charge interest rates like a credit card, but you still owe money to someone else. If you have a structured settlement or annuity, however, you could sell some of your future payments and use your own cash to pay for the surgery, care, or procedure.

Pay Medical Bills With A Cash Lump Sum

At Peachtree Financial, we’ve helped customers achieve their future goals. You can sell all or just a portion of your remaining payments for a lump sum of cash you can use sooner.

Since it’s your money, you can use it however you need. Whether that’s covering the cost of your procedure, or helping you pay the bills while you take the time to recover, selling your future payments can make it easier to receive the procedure you want.

If you want to learn about your options, give us a call. We’ll ask you a few questions and give you a free, no-obligation quote.